Patterns in the Tide
by Ithilien
Summary: Aging can bring insights, but can it also bring acceptance of life's inevitabilities and sacrifices? Post-RotK. A birthday fic for Lamiel.


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A/N: Now before you get your feathers all ruffled, calm yourself and do not fret. I have not deserted "The Hunting Trip". I am only taking a momentary respite to write this little birthday fic for Lamiel. 

Happy Birthday, Lamiel! 

And while I'm at it, I might as well warn you that I have another one in the works for JastaElf's birthday next week.

Then I'm going on a vacation [ducks hurtled objects]. 

Okay, okay! I can already hear the rising scream from the masses. Let me stop you by saying what I am planning on doing here. I am writing to completion on "The Hunting Trip". I know some of you just want the story and you want it now, but as I have been endlessly hinting in that tale, I am very near the end, and so in order to keep all the wayward threads attached and all the emotions at a constant, I thought it best to write it all at once and be done with it. That does not mean I will be presenting one sweeping chapter, but more likely three chapters and the epilogue. The good news is they will either come in one big lump, or at worst, spaced out by just a few days between. So there you have it--something to look forward to. Smooth the fur back. Calm yourself . . . Better? Now sit back and enjoy this little journey to another place and time. 

Disclaimer: All characters, places, and things in this story that even hint at being Lord of the Ring-ish could never possibly be owned by me and I disavow any right to said stuff. They belong solely to the Tolkien estate, and my little dalliance in the heads and hearts of these characters earns nothing for me but a few jollies. No profit is made from this endeavor, and I hold nothing but the highest respect for J.R.R.Tolkien and the legacy he has left us. Somewhere off in Valinor, I know he must be smiling. Or frowning. Or something.

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Patterns in the Tide  
By Ithilien

"Dear Valar, Aragorn! Can we climb any slower?" Legolas laughed, calling over his shoulder to his companion.

"We could try," Aragorn responded with a ragged breath, "if you would only let me."

"No need," Legolas scoffed, ignoring the grumbled response. "You are vigorous still. Age is a state of mind."

"_Said the immortal being,"_ Aragorn completed with a sarcastic sneer, then slowed his pace, scowling up to the Elf. "Ai, why do you drag me up here, Legolas? I know the reach of my lands. I need not climb the tallest peak to see what my maps can already tell me," Aragorn panted. He stopped, wheezing breathless gulps of air, then placed a hand on a tree, leaning against it for support. "I need to rest," he sighed, but he was smiling as he spoke and Legolas, glancing over his shoulder, decided the king was truly enjoying himself, despite the complaints.

Legolas turned around to face the exhausted man. Grey hair peppered the sable mane of his friend, and though Legolas had long been a witness to the slow process of aging in his companion, every once in a while he found himself startled by the visage of Aragorn as an old man. He had watched it evolve over the years, dragging on with such tedious momentum as to be nearly imperceptible. Yet still at other times it seemed that his friend changed in but the blink of an eye. Fast in coming, or slow in progress, his heart ached all the same for the feeble manner that had come to mark his friend's body. To Legolas, time was but a measure of men, and nowhere was it more apparent than in the aging process. Yet remorseful though he was, Legolas was schooled at masking his sorrow, and he returned to the smiling countenance he knew his friend appreciated most. 

"Come, Aragorn. It is not much further. A few steps more," he urged.

"That is what you said a half hour ago," the king argued, still gasping. 

"And it has taken that long just to progress those few steps!" the Elf teased.

Aragorn laughed. "Why will you not just tell me what it is that you wish me to see?"

"Because, my friend, this is something I believe you must see with your own eyes," Legolas answered.

"My eyes do not see as well as they once did. You may have to tell me in spite of yourself," Aragorn groused.

"If needed, I will, but I have little doubt you will try to see for yourself once you realize what is ahead. This is something beyond anything you may have aspired," the Elf answered, encouragement ringing in his voice.

The wearied king laughed then. "Now I know this is a wasted journey. I have everything I could ever want. The Valar have blessed me, Legolas. All I could ever have hoped to achieve has been granted."

"Perhaps. But you have not yet seen it." Then with mirth playing in his voice, the Elf's narrowed his eyes as he chastised, "Ai, but I am keen to your motives, Aragorn. You think to stall me for more time. Alas, your rest has come to an end. Up, you lazy king!" Legolas laughed, tugging on his friend's arm to get him to move again.

"You mistake me for someone younger, Elf!" Aragorn said as he roused himself to stand on his own.

"I do not. I know you are the man who ran with barely a moments rest across the plains of Rohan," Legolas countered with a smile.

"Men have been born and died in the time in between then and now, Legolas," Aragorn sighed. His hand came up to clasp the shoulder of his friend. "It was nearly a lifetime ago for some, and I have changed. I am no longer that man."

Legolas paused, his face frozen for a moment by the swift strike of those words. 

Here was age, and he blinked at it fearfully. He could never truly understand what it was to whither away as his friends all had come to do. For Legolas, there was a constant feeling of ambivalent contrast. He felt as old as the mountains and yet as full of life and vim as a yearling fawn. His perception could never meet what his friends felt. Yet death was imminent in the one before him and all he could do was sigh a piteous response. Pity he could muster, for it was what he felt most when he saw these dearest ones passing, but his own acceptance for this ugly truth was a bitter pill that he had difficulty swallowing. Yet how easy they made it seem. Regretful though they were, his mortal friends seemed to accept their fate with a grace Legolas was not sure he could muster were he put to the same parameters. 

Aragorn's eyes searched him now, and Legolas knew that his dear friend was searching for words to ease the Elf's ache. Pity turned both ways, so it seemed. "Legolas . . . please," Aragorn pleaded softly. It was a long put-off discussion between them of which Legolas refused to debate.

He would not allow morbid thoughts to creep into his pleasure. This was meant to be a good day. And though the sorrow did not leave his friend's face, Legolas pushed the thoughts away, relegating them to another day. To linger on his agonies served him none, and he had a purpose greater than this for this moment in time. His face brightened. His eyes begged forth to the hilltop, urging Aragorn once again. "Come, come friend. I will drag you, or carry you if need be, but I will not be stalled any longer."

"Very well," Aragorn groaned as the Elf wrapped a firm hand beneath the elbow of his old companion and used his strength to pull them onward up the trail. The rest appeared to be enough though to reinvigorate Aragorn, for Legolas felt the sinewy muscles grow taut and firm beneath the traveling attire as the man pushed himself and carried himself forward and up. There was strength still in this man, and because of that, Legolas knew he could stall the confrontation with death he must face for a time still. 

Legolas resumed his position in the lead, climbing over the rock-strewn ground, past the point of the treeline and onward the last hundred feet or so needed to cover the ground to the bluff. That was their destination, and true to his word, it was quite near.  
  
The air at the peak was crisp and thin, and Legolas felt the heady lightness it gave him. He smiled at the tightness pulling his chest. The fierce heat within him was a contrast to the cool freshness he took into his lungs. He felt for that moment as if he had reached the top of the world, and joy filled him for the intoxicating pleasure it gave him to behold. For the moment, at least, he was refreshed and his agonies could be forgotten here. At his side, Aragorn too smiled, the beaming grin handsomely adorning the older man's face as he looked out over the broad sweep of land set before them. No longer were there protests, and it seemed Aragorn could not deny the sheer joy of the view laid at their feet. 

Beyond, as far as the eye could see, lay all of Gondor lands. The morning sun burned the haze off the far stretches of the vista, and in the distance could be seen the receding line of the Ered Nimrais, the Mindolluin being the closest peak. From here they stood on the southern side of those ridges, in the farthest point of Ithilien lands. With a sharp eye, Poros could be seen, as well as Pelargir and beyond that Linhir. Wind brushed hair from their faces, and it was a mimicking motion, reflecting the waves of the grasslands that swayed on the flattening grounds near the Anduin wash. Fingerlike watercourses opened out from the snakelike path of the river, wending its way outward and onward to the sea.

Legolas could just make out the breaking white line on the shoreline that he new to be the waves and the long ripples that ran over the azure surface that slowly progressed to the land. From this distance they moved at a slow, mesmerizing pace, dragging and drawing their endless pattern over the sand. _Like a breath taken and released_, he thought_. Like the continuous thrum of a heartbeat. . . . Like all the ages rolling on._ Over and over again, the waves lifted and hauled their mighty burdens, beauteous and magnificent for their power, yet outwardly unchanging in their duty and task. His mind drifed on those rocking currents. Again and again they repeated their course, pummeling strength compounded by pummeling strength. Yet they soothed, delicate caress followed by delicate caress. _An endless pattern, _he thought,_ woven over time. _

"Incredible," Aragorn said, startling Legolas with the utterance, and it took the Elf a moment before he could wrest his eyes away from the slowly writhing shore. Such respect and longing did he feel there, a kinship that matched him, completed him, and yet tore at him for reasons he could never quite understand whenever he set his mind upon its beauty. He tearfully blinked his eyes, shaking his head for the depth of melancholy visited upon him and willing himself back to the pleasure of his friend's company. It called to him and he longed for it, but he would not surrender to it yet. He turned now, determined, to embrace what was before him, for he knew this other part of the world was a part of the Valar's will as well. And yet he felt weak as he pulled his eyes away from the sea, ignoring the timeless force in the effort to accept the dauntless requirements laid upon him. 

Aragorn stirred and it was only then that Legolas realized they had been standing for a time and he had said nothing to his friend of their purpose. It seemed the awesome strength before them had overwhelmed him somehow, and the Elf wondered how long had they stood upon this ridge looking out on this grand expanse? Not too long, it seemed, for Aragorn waited patiently for his friend to get his fill of the sight, though the old man huddled a bit as if to chase off a chill. 

Aragorn again shifted. As if reading his thoughts, the Elf saw the uncertain smile nicking the corners of his friend's mouth. The glance almost seemed to say, surely there was more to this burdensome journey than just the lovely view? Legolas ducked his head, embarrassed by the wayward path of his thoughts and how they had distracted him from his true reason for bringing Gondor's king to this place.

"There is more that I would have you see, Estel," he murmured almost apologetically. 

The king's brow furrowed at the comment, as if not seeing what else might be there. He turned in the direction of Ithilien lands and the realm that Legolas had built, guessing, Legolas supposed, that that was what the Elf wished to share. "It is a fetching sight, Legolas. Surely your toils have been well met. This garden shall reap a fragrant and fruitful harvest yet again. The year ahead shows promise."

The Elf laughed. _Such a mortal response! He looks only at what is before him and what is here now. He sees only the immediate when what I see are more repetitions of an endless pattern. Year upon year. Lifetime upon lifetime. Age upon age._

And though the overall patterns stayed the same, like the tides, in the end, the Elf knew the individual designs could alter. In a way, that made watching what formed all that much more exciting and unpredictable. And in that he saw the kinship to man. _They are tied to one another, man and earth_, he decided._ They are sculpted and changed like this world._ From here, Legolas could see it all. An endless bolt of fabric lay before him and all the workings of the land were the quilted designs, straying from their original intent in subtle workings of the weave. The changes were only apparent from a distance so that one no longer saw the individual threads. 

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"Look this way then, dear friend, and perhaps you will see what in truth there is for us to share." And with that, Legolas gently guided his friend around so that his back was turned to the inspiration of which they had partaken. They were directed east now, and the king was moved reluctantly. Legolas knew his friend never gazed in this direction, except from his tower, and only then to see to the limits of his eye into Ithilien. Too much evil had been done in the lands beyond, and he supposed it was difficult to forget, even for a mortal mind. But desirous of forgiving or not, it was relevant that Aragorn know what came, and to act accordingly to the new challenge it presented. So the Elf forced his friend to turn and behold what had come of the dark lands of Mordor.

He watched the man's mood, gauging the dark scowl that automatically swept over that face. Aragorn looked out with disdain, but softly the Elf could see the expression softening. The man squinted, blinking, forcing his eyes to focus on what seemed so readily apparent to Legolas' eyes. A long intake of air told him the man truly did see, and Legolas felt a knowing smile return to his own face. 

"Can this truly be, Legolas?" the man asked.

The Elf nodded and replied, "Your eyes do not deceive. It is true." 

And with that answer his eyes turned and gazed over the landscape before them. Dark were the craggy walls of the Ephel Duath, tearing up from the valley like shards of black coal, heartless and dense. But there was something here that went beyond the resilient ugliness of those effusive walls. The lands below, though brown and listless for long years of time, were fringed in the like of those on the other side of the mammoth rise. . . There was a hint now that there might be hope yet for those lands.

The color green touched the landscape, green as in the color of new life.

"How?" the king asked, his mouth hanging open in an awestruck expression.

"The land has . . . changed." The Elf lingered over that word, considering it.He choked back feelings he could not explain -- grief, sorrow, heartache -- as he went on to say, "Many seasons have passed and the land is regaining its strength. It cannot be held back from its potential." 

  
"Never in a hundred lifetimes did I think it would pass," Aragorn whispered, eyes wide in wonder. "Should we rejoice? Do you think . . . is it reformed?"

The Elf gazed at the verdant color that tinted the ugly browns of the land below, and though he knew it should make him feel renewed, revitalized by the signs of recovery, his heart was too heavy to find rekindling in witness to this birthing. "I think this land has been a prisoner of a dark punishment of which it could not escape. It was made a hostage and accomplice to evil. I think it shows signs of finally being free. Rejoice for its birth, Aragorn."

Aragorn stared out in the vast valley for a moment before resettling his eyes upon the Elf. "I cannot when I know you mourn.  
  
The Elf's face flushed with embarrassment. "Forgive me. I . . . .I would wonder the outcome here."

"What do you mean? You see it," Aragorn said gesturing at the sight with a wave of his hand and a smile.

"Do I? I fear I do not. I see only the beginnings of something fresh and yearning," Legolas answered, shaking his head.

"Is that not enough?" Aragorn asked.

Like a pummeling wave it hit him. _If I leave I will forfeit my part of the dream. I will not know how the pattern completes itself!_

Legolas was shaking and he had not realized it until that moment. Yet his knees felt weak and his stomach felt unsettled, and suddenly all he wanted was to be away from here, away from age and death, away from the endless pattern of life followed by death followed by life yet again. Like the waves of the ocean, yet far more intimate than that was this lapping sorrow. How could he live and embrace a moment when he knew its end would cause him so much harm? His lungs seared with the agonizing pain of this reality. He turned away, looking again to the sea, and saw there the sameness and the calm that it sent to his soul. He collapsed into himself then, arms huddled into bent knees.   
  
"I do not have it in me," he lamented weakly. "I cannot . . . the ache. Yet how can I leave when there is yet one more thing to watch, one more chance for my heart to be captured, one more opportunity to revel in the joy of nature's bounty."

He heard a drawn sigh. More pity? He did not think he could stomach such a lowly feeling at the moment. But Aragorn spoke with compassion. "None of us wants to part from this world, Legolas," the man said, bending down and taking a seat next to the Elf. "But we must. It is a part of the course we are given. All things have a beginning, and they must have an end. You must trust those you leave behind to see the tasks done."

Legolas scoffed. "I do not end, Estel. I am an Elf."

"But the sea calls you, Legolas. You must leave. Someday . . . soon," the man said in a soothing voice that was strangely courageous and sure.

"I fear my eye is too focused on the fretwork to see the whole of the fabric. It hurts to look away and see the endless lengths that follow," Legolas whispered. Then he swallowed his sob and said in a stronger voice that said little of his courage, "I have no illusions about my people, Estel. They will leave these lands before the full of what we see may yet be met and preserved. This is all for naught."

"Legolas! Nay! Do not say that!" Aragorn exclaimed.

"Ai, but it is true. What proof do we have that anything of what we have done will live on? That we will be remembered? None! And unless we linger, it will all be torn away, just like one more wave in the tides," the Elf replied mournfully. "Can you not know? Men forget, Estel! Lives become histories that are no more than words on a page! Markers are lifted! There is no preservation. There is no sanctity, in mankind."

"You look for too much, my friend. Can you not find satisfaction in what is here, what is now?"

"Like celebrating the bounty of a mere season?" Legolas mocked.

"Yes." Aragorn shifted and turned to look back at the land once thought of as dead. "You doubt, Legolas, but I do understand. I know what I am. I know what place I hold. I am but year in the seasons of the earth," Aragorn said.

Legolas answered sullenly. "And I am the sea, Estel. I am the fabric that never changes. I am the constancy of the tides."

"Even the sea changes, my friend. Perhaps not as swiftly as the land or the seasons, but grain by grain the sand shifts and the shore is reformed."

"That does nothing to prove to me that this all shall yet go on with any merit of success," Legolas said pointing back to the Mordor fields.  
  
"And by what standards are we to judge what is a success? Is it something only you may declare? Nay, relinquish your grasp and let what is here do what it will. It will either flourish or remain the timid spark of life that it is now, but that will be the outcome of its own make."

"How do I dare let it go?" the Elf asked, gasping at the unconscionable thought. 

There was a long pause before words were spoken again. "Surely this is not why you stay? That you may leave behind a legacy?" Aragorn asked in a tentative voice.

Legolas shook his head as his voice rasped out, "Nay."

Aragorn clapped a hand to his friend's back. "I did not think your reasons to be so selfish."

"But my reasons are selfish! Do you not wonder at them? You have never asked," the Elf said, his sad eyes now gazing again at his aged companion.

"I think I know your reasons. I would not cast them being for selfish intent," the king replied.

"But I beg to differ. I stay for you, that I might be your strength when it is need. I stay so I may be a hand to guide you when you are too weary to go alone. I stay as a set of eyes to watch for you when you cannot see what lies in the distance. I stay that I might see your children directed to love all the good things of the earth, to appreciate _this_," Legolas answered, gesturing to the vista about them. "All of this I do with the knowledge that it benefits no one but myself. And you."

"Legolas . . ." the man said, grasping his friend's hand in a tight grip and forcing eyes gone dark with misery to look into those of gray. "Do not forsake this friendship as something worthless. My intentions are the same as yours, yet I know I have had an affect. As have you. My destiny is shorter perhaps than yours, but I see the pattern I have laid. I know that I have shaped the world to go in the way I have directed," Aragorn said sternly.

"But it could change!" the Elf cried.

"It should. It must!" Aragorn argued. He stood looking out at the world all around them. "I have faith that it will follow the path that it must. But I also know that my children will pass on a part of what I am, consciously or not, and that, if I did as I might, some day they will teach my loves and my passions to their own children. In this I hope to remain still in the hearts of generations to come, even if those that follow no longer realize they were mine. In this I am reborn. Can you not see it? You see so well the other patterns of time. Will you not see this one too?"

The Elf shook his head, too laden of heart to try to find Aragorn's point. The man went on. "The pattern may change, but the stitching remains intact throughout the weave. The thread, like the whole of the fabric stays the same.

Aragorn clapped a hand to the Elf's shoulder as he nodded to the new bounty of land. His voice was young. "My task is not yet done. This is something new for which we may share. Will you help me teach others how to kindle and hold what we would bequeath to them?"

Legolas' eyes followed his friend's, and then he turned his gaze west and north. The cresting light on the shadowy mountains shone in gold and blue, the snowy-tops trimmed in lavender values. And before them lay the evergreen forests and tawny brown grasses of the fields. Tinges of leafy green fringed their surroundings, signs of new life abounding. This was the renewing spirit the Elf knew he must use for succor. Fresh and alive was the world about them, but always repeating, always returning to the pattern. The Elf sucked it into his heart, knowing to linger in his sorrow would only paint the world with an ugliness he knew did not really exist. A feeling of regeneration came to him with the bounty of springtime's vigor. From this grand view, the sea beckoned for his attention, and his eyes glanced briefly there, but he did not turn to it, instead looking northward to the lands of Ithilien and what yet he might pass on there. He nodded soberly, breathing it in with a slow inhale and exhale, and then he took a step forward toward their descent.

  
Then he quickened his stride, the suddenness of flippant mirth plying him to give in and find happiness in what he could harvest of the time. "Come, then Aragorn, our work is set before us. Let us not dally in our task," the Elf called, hopping lightly down their trail.

Behind him he heard the words spoken, laced with the irritation of one harried and simultaneously the bemusement of one wise and long-sighted. "Slow down, Legolas. Let us enjoy the journey while we may. There is yet time before we are done." 


End file.
